Oxide Games' Dan Baker is getting all excited about Mantle in the upcoming game Star Swarm. He told Maximum PC that Mantle isn't just an low-level API that's close to the metal. But when compared to DirectX, Mantle is lower in the overall software stack.

Baker said that Mantle still abstracts the details of the shader cores themselves, so that it is not clear if it is running on a vector machine or a scalar machine. However, what isn't abstracted is the basic way a GPU operates, he said. The GPU is another processor, just like any other, that reads and writes memory. One thing that has happened is that GPUs are now general in terms of functionality. They can read memory anywhere. They can write memory anywhere."

Mantle puts the responsibility onto the developer. Some feel that is too much, but this really is not any different from managing multiple CPUs on a system, which Oxide have gotten good at. Oxide does not program multiple CPUs with an API, it just does it itself. Mantle gives us a similar capability for the GPU, he said. When asked about the performance in Star Swarm, Baker indicated that the performance will depend on how exploitative you are, and the specifics of the engine. In the case of Star Swarm, the team was limited in what they could do by driver overhead problems. There have been decisions made where the team traded GPU performance for CPU.

Baker said that the Direct3D performance for the game absolutely outstanding. We have spent a huge amount of time optimising around D3D, and are biased in D3D's favor. “Mantle, on the other hand, we've spent far less time with and currently have only pretty basic optimizations. But Mantle is such an elegant API that it still dwarfs our D3D performance," Baker said.

AMD has released an interesting 42-minute video explaining Mantle. However, if your morning schedule doesn’t allow you to waste so much time, you can skip the geeky bit and check out some eye candy, courtesy of Oxide Games.

Oxide is a relatively new studio, but it is not short on talent. Most members are Civilization V developers and the outfit already has a new 64-bit engine in the works. The Nitrous engine is designed for use on Sony and Microsoft consoles, as well as PCs. With that in mind it is hardly surprising that Oxide decided to embrace AMD’s new Mantle API.

Oxide’s upcoming space strategy title Galactic Civilizations 3 appears to be based on the Nitrous engine. The 64-bit engine is said to support 10,000 interactive units along with stunning visuals. That makes it very suitable for Civ-like titles.

The demo showcased by AMD features thousands of space ships flying in formation, which then disintegrates into what can only be described as a huge dogfight set in an imaginary system with a nice desert planet. We can only assume that the desert planet contains substantial reserves of dillithium crystals and that the armada is aiming to bring democracy to that particular part of the galaxy, with a bit of help from Halliburton and KBR Inc.

In any case you can check out the impressive demo if you fast forward to 26:00, since our glorious CMS is refusing to cooperate and allow YouTube links with a preset time.

AMD has announced that three new developers have jumped on the Mantle API train, Cloud Imperium Games, Eidos-Montréal, a part of the Square Enix Group, and Oxide Games. These three will join DICE and hopefully, for AMD's sake, push the Mantle API to become a new popular API on the block.

In case you missed it back in September when it was announced during the GPU'13 press conference, AMD's Mantle API is a new low-level API that should provide PC game developers an experience similar to the one on consoles. It will allow them to have a direct access to GPU features, rendering techniques and reduce CPU overhead, all on GCN-based GPUs. Although consoles are nowhere near the PC in terms of performance, games on consoles usually perform much better, mostly thanks to a low overhead OS that allows developer to pull a lot of hardware resources, while PCs are overwhelmed with complex APIs, OS and complex drivers.

Cloud Imperium Games developer will use the Mantle API in its "Star Citizen", a crowd-funded PC space simulator with legendary game designer Chris Roberts behind the wheel. According to Roberts, AMD's Mantle will allow them to extract more performance from AMD Radeon GPU than any other graphics API, which should be quite important considering that a game like Star Citizen is being designed with the need for massive GPU horsepower.

Eidos-Montréal is currently working on a new Thief game title, which is a first-person stealth adventure game set for release in February 2014. David Anfossi, studio head, Eidos-Montréal noted that Mantle lets them use AMD Radeon GPUs "the way they are meant to be used" (pun probably intended), unlocking many new opportunities and increased CPU and GPU performance.

Last but not the least is Oxide Games with its new "Nitrous" engine for 64-bit, multi-core processors. Dan Baker, co-founder of Oxide Games noted that AMD's Mantle technology lets them get more out of the hardware than any other solution available.

DICE was already backing up the Mantle API from day one and its Battlefield 4 will be one of the first games to feature it, at least when DICE issues the promised patch.

All three new developers will join DICE and speak about Mantle API architecture and implementation at the AMD Developer Summit scheduled for November 11th.